Wife as Slave?

To me, marriage is a partnership in which a man and woman seek to build a life together and grow with one another. Each has the same rights and each has a voice in decisions that affect family life.

There is one religion that purports to respect women but doesn't, Islam. There are many verses in the Koran that list unclean things as being dogs, monkeys, and women. It is not isolated verses. Women should be covered from head to foot to keep men from being distracted from natural impulses. A lot of women regard the hajib, burkha and similar as a testament to their faith. I wonder what they would make of the following:

The Place of Women in Pure Islam

by M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton


"Our scholars have said: "Allah the most exalted, He made the dowry to be a substitute. He treated it like other things that require a substitute. Because of his saying: "(Such wives as you enjoy thereby, give them their wages apportionate. Q. 4:24) So He called it a wage. He took it outside the law of gifts to the law of replacements. The argument that both partners enjoy each other in marriage and that the dowry is an additional payment for the wife, is not so. But the husband is obliged to pay the dowry, so that he may own the right of rulership over the woman, and stand as the "master to his slave" in the relationship because of what he gave as a substitute. So that her benefit becomes his. So she cannot fast except by his permission. She cannot go to pilgrimage, except by his permission. She does not leave the house, except by his permission. And he will have the right over her property except up to a third will belong to her. It goes without saying, that he will have the right over her body. "[132] (Ibn al-'Araby)

The above quotations are not a collection of isolated, eccentric, or uncommon examples, but they are a representation of the main stream of a coherent consistent point of view regarding the place of women in Islam. Debate

In Islam when a woman marries, her husband has control over every aspect of her life. She needs his permission to even go out of the house or on a religious pilgrimage. He has the right of all but a third of her property. Even her body is not her own!!

So in other words, when a man pays the dowry and marries a woman, that woman becomes his slave and this view is consistent with the place of women in mainstream Islam.

The hajib, which so many Muslim women in Western countries embrace as a testament to their faith, is really another tool to suppress women. It maybe a testament to their faith but it is a faith that seeks to suppress women and treats a woman as nothing more than a instrument for satisfying a man's sexual drive. Many Muslim countries deride Western countries for turning women into sex objects but Muslim countries are the ones that treat their women as nothing but sex objects.

When marriage becomes perverted to a master/slave relationship, no marriage exists. In the above excerpt, it turns what should be a joyous union into a slave transaction in which the woman is paid to become a slave and is called marriage.